Koguryo in Traditional Historiography

The Creation of an Ancient Minority Nationality: Koguryo in Chinese Historiography Mark Byington Harvard University June 2002 Anyone familiar with Korean history will be likewise familiar with the integral role of the ancient state of Koguryo in Korean historiography. In may come as a surprise to some readers that over the past decade a heated debate has engaged the attention of many Korean and Chinese scholars, the point of contention being whether modern Koreans or modern Chinese hold the rightful claim to Koguryo ’s heritage. On one level such a conflict might have been expected since Koguryo was a state that controlled territories on both sides of the current Yalu River border between North Korea and the People ’s Republic of China. And indeed this territorial consideration lies very close to the heart of the debate, though neither party seems willing to acknowledge this openly. In the present paper, however, I will argue that the debate was an inevitable consequence of the twentieth century tendency, among both Chinese and Korean scholars, to reconceptualize past interregional relations in order to bring the perceived form of pre-modern East Asian states into conceptual alignment with that of the modern nation-state. In the study below I will focus almost exclusively on the treatment of Koguryo in modern Chinese historiography, deferring a detailed study of the place of Koguryo in modern Korean nationalism to a later project. Koguryo in Traditional Historiography The Koguryo state at its peak controlled vast territories encompassing the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the eastern and southern halves respectively of the modern Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin. During the final half century of its long existence (traditionally 37 b.c. to 668), Koguryo was engaged in continuous warfare with the Chinese Tang dynasty to its west and the peninsular states of Paekche and Silla to its south. Even before the fall of Koguryo in 668 to the allied armies of Tang and Silla, bids for possession of its mantle of legitimacy had already appeared. During what are now referred to as the Unification Wars, Tang and Silla propaganda began to refer to the peninsular states as the Three Kingdoms of the East ( haedong samguk ), or sometimes as the Three Han. This appears to have been a conscious effort to draw a parallel between the three peninsular states and the Three Kingdoms of third century China, which fought one another in an attempt to restore the “natural ” unity that had existed under the previous dynasty of Han. By drawing on this historical precedent, Silla and Tang could justify their aggressions against Paekche and Koguryo as a righteous effort to restore a unity, which in the case of the peninsular states is not likely ever to have existed. After the fall of Koguryo and the subsequent withdrawal of the Tang occupation forces, Silla managed to extend its control over the former lands of Paekche, but it was able to secure only the southernmost periphery of Koguryo ’s former territories. By the end of the seventh century most of the former lands of Koguryo north of the Taedong River had become the de facto possession of the newly emergent state of Parhae. Both Silla and Parhae continued to claim the Koguryo heritage ? Silla as a would-be unifier and Parhae as a self-proclaimed political heir ? until the fall of both states in the early tenth century. The founder of the Koryo state that succeeded Silla drew from Koguryo the name of his state, but he and his polity were clearly derived from Silla. Nevertheless, Koryo ’s claim to the Koguryo heritage carried some respectable weight. When the Khitan commander Xiao Hengde demanded in 993 that Koryo hand over territory that had formerly belonged to Koguryo, the Koryo commander So Hui is said to have responded with such a convincing argument for Koryo ’s right to Koguryo lands that the Khitan quietly backed down. Although the twelfth century saw some debate within the Koryo capital with regard to whether Koryo was properly a state of Koguryo descent or one of Silla descent, with the publication in 1145 of the Samguk sagi , Koguryo became permanently lodged in the historiographic orthodoxy of peninsular states as one of the ancient Three Kingdoms. Chinese claims to territories occupied by Koguryo do appear sporadically in history texts of the Tang dynasty, but they are nearly always asserted as propaganda meant to justify Tang ’s military expeditions against Koguryo. Tang ’s planned conquest of Koguryo was at times portrayed as a mission to restore Chinese control over the territories of its former commanderies of Liaodong and Lelang, which had centuries ago fallen under Koguryo control. After the collapse of Koguryo in 668, Tang moved quickly to establish the Andong Protectorate in the Koguryo capital city of P ’yongyang, but local resistance, actively encouraged by Silla, soon forced the protectorate to withdraw to Liaodong. After the failure of the protectorate to assert Tang control over Koguryo ’s peninsular territories, and Parhae ’s subsequent success in consolidating those territories under its own administration, Tang formally relinquished to Silla in 735 all lands south of the Taedong River. This act constituted nothing more than a formal acknowledgement of what for Tang had already long been a regrettable reality. From this time and until the twentieth century, no Chinese regime originating in the Central Plains of China had asserted a serious claim for possession of the Koguryo heritage or for a right to its territories based on any kind of perceived integration of Koguryo within ancient China. It is therefore surprising that by the end of the twentieth century Chinese scholars would be arguing passionately that Koguryo was, in fact, an integral and dependent component of the ancient Chinese state. I will argue below that this new Chinese concern with Koguryo coincides with and is one consequence of the advent of state nationalism in East Asia. Nationalism and the Modern Chinese State The sudden Chinese interest in the heritage of Koguryo may be seen as part of the most recent phase of a process that began in the late nineteenth century, when a new discourse of identity bound with conceptions of race and nationalism appeared in context with late-Qing reform and modernization programs. From the 1890s, reform advocates like Kang Youwei (1858-1927) and revolutionaries like Zhang Binglin (1868-1936) began to call for a unity of peoples, based on various conceptions of racial or ethnic nationalism, in order to counter through the solidarity of a nation-state the imperialist threat represented by the Western powers and Japan. These new nationalist concepts, informed in part by contemporary western notions of race and social Darwinism and in part by a Qing tradition of lineal genealogical descent, are today popularly viewed as marking a radical and fundamental break with earlier traditional ways of conceiving the self and the state. The traditional conception of the state is typically seen as having been defined in terms of a culture of Confucian statecraft, wherein loyalties were directed toward the moral ruler (regardless of his ancestral affiliations) rather than toward a specific regime or people (Harrison 1969). The late Qing writers advocated a new arrangement wherein loyalties were instead directed toward the nation-state, which was defined variously as composed of one or more ethnic groups. James Townsend has referred to the academic formulation of this phenomenon as the “Culturalism to Nationalism thesis, ” which he aptly describes as a generalization useful for analysis if not a well-defined paradigm (Townsend 1992). The traditional model is based upon an assumed cultural superiority of the “Chinese ” state, the rulers of which were expected and required to conform to a predefined moral code grounded in Confucian ethics. The possession and practice of this moral code is seen as the measure by which the Chinese and the uncultured barbarian were distinguished. However, barbarians could be transformed under the influence of the superior culture, and the degree to which they adopted Confucian norms determined their relative position in the idealized Chinese world order. Such positions include the totally uncultured peoples, with whom the Chinese states have no formal relations; outer tributaries who have adopted some degree of Chinese culture and with whom diplomatic interchange is possible; more highly cultured inner tributaries who engage China as closely affiliated but independent polities; and those former tributaries who have come to be directly administered by the Chinese state (Harrell 1999). States and peoples occupying any of the positions of this idealized schema may shift to another position, though the ultimate goal from the Chinese perspective is for all to tend toward full integration with the Chinese state. There were aberrations to this assimilationist model, of course, for in some instances barbarian groups invaded China and established their own dynasties, but they are said to have been successful only because they governed China in accordance with the Confucian moral code ? in other words, they did not have to be Chinese to conquer China, but they had to become Chinese to rule China. Traditional conceptions of what and who was “Chinese ” were thus fluid to an extent, though it is important to point out that such concerns as we have discussed them were limited to a small, educated elite class. Although the culturalist argument emphasizes the identification of self and state with moral statecraft, this does not of necessity preclude the co-existence of forms of ethnic consciousness or nationalism. Indeed, some of the Manchu conquerors of China appear to have taken rudimentary steps toward a formulaic expression of their own ethnic identity by the end of the eighteenth century.

Load more